If you have ten thousand
regulations you destroy all respect for the law – Winston Churchill

The more prohibitions you have, the
less virtuous people will be – Lao Tsu

The Law, in its grand equality,
forbids both the rich and the poor to sleep under bridges, to steal bread and
beg on the streets
- Anatole France

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small
flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” Jonathan Swift

Colour key:

People

Abolition of punishments

Capital Pubishment and its
abolition –
see Appendix 2 below

Abolition of other
punishments- See Appendix 3 below

Prisons- see Appendix 6 below

For changes in the legal
prosecution and punishment of minors, see Morals

4/7/2014, Former entertainer Rolf Harris, 84, was sentenced
to 5 years 9 months for sexual crimes against children in the 1970s and 80s.

27/1/2010, The first criminal trial
without a jury for 400 years opened in London.

18/2/2005, In England and Wales, hunting with dogs became
illegal.

4/6/2000. In the UK, the Conservative opposition announced
plans whereby they would have prisoners work full-time whilst in jail in order
to pay compensation to their victims.

30/7/1998, The conviction of Derek
Bentley for the murder of a policeman in 1952 was posthumously
rescinded; Bentley was hanged
in 1953.

26/8/1996. The courts in Sweden heard their
first ever case of dangerous handling of
a shopping trolley.

3/10/1989, The Shetland Island of Foula was shocked by its
first crime in over 80 years. A Land Rover had been vandalised; a 17-year-old
was later convicted and fined £50.

17/8/1989. Richard Hart, accused of theft, became
Britain’s first electronically tagged
suspect and was allowed home.

27/5/1988, In Canada, a man who ‘sleepwalked’, drove over to
his mother’s house and killed her with an iron bar, was acquitted of murder.

13/11/1987. The first criminal conviction based on genetic fingerprinting saw a rapist
sentenced to 8 years at Bristol Crown Court.

23/10/1984. The Police Federation in
Britain said that from now all Police Forces in England and Wales should be equipped
with plastic bullets.

1974, The Police National Computer at Hendon became operational. Set up in
1969, it stored information from the UK’s 800 police stations.

1971, In the UK, the old Assize Courts were abolished by he
Courts Act 1971. The Assize Courts were presided over by High Court judges, who
travelled on ‘Circuit’; they dated from ther reign of King Henry II.

22/3/1969.Soccer
hooligans ran riot on the LondonUnderground, causing thousands of pounds of
damage.

5/10/1967, The first
majority verdict was recorded in a UK court, 10 to 2, at Brighton Quarter
Sessions.

21/7/1967, Majority
verdicts were now allowed in UK courts.

18/10/1966. The hanged Timothy Evans
won a posthumous Royal Pardon, see 15/7/1953.

18/5/1964,Mods and Rockers clashed
at UK south coast resorts.

30/3/1964,Mods and Rockers clashed on the seafront at
Clacton.

30/8/1958, The police clashed with 500 ‘Teddy Boys’ in Nottingham.

28/5/1955, 16 Teddy
Boys were arrested after a disturbance at a dance hall in Bath.

6/5/1954, Sir David Maxwell-Fylde, British Home Secretary, said the problem of Teddy Boys was not
widespread.

15/7/1953, John Christie was hanged ( see 25/3/1953) one
day after a government tribunal maintained that Timothy Evans was rightly
convicted of murdering his wife at Christie’s house and hanged for the crime. Christie
had been convicted of murder on 25/6/1953; three years earlier Christie
had been key witness against Evans. After Christie’s conviction, Evans’
family asked for a judicial review. See 18/10/1966.

28/1/1953, Derek Bentley was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, see
11/12/1952.

11/12/1952, Derek Bentley, 19, was sentenced to death for
the murder of a policeman, even though his accomplice Christopher Craig, 16, fired the
fatal shot. The incident occurred during a bungled robbery in which police
surrounded the pair on the roof of a Croydon warehouse. Craig was too young to hang and
was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Bentley had shouted to Craig “Let him have it”; did he
mean ‘shoot him’ or ‘let him have the gun’?

2/11/1952, The Croydon Rooftop Murder took place. Two illiterate young men, Christopher
Craig (16) and Derek Bentley (18, almost 19) were seen
breaking into a confectionery warehouse. The police were called and Bentley
was arrested almost immediately. When the police moved to arrest Craig
he pulled out a gun; Bentley, then under arrest, shouted at Craig
“Let him have it!” Craig then shot two policemen, one fatally. Craig
was too young to hang, and got life imprisonment; Bentley was sentenced to death.
Many thought that Bentley too should have got life, as, firstly,
he had been under arrest when the fatal shot was fired, and secondly, the doubt
surrounding Bentley’s
motive in what he said; did he mean ‘let him have a bullet’ or ‘give him the
gun’? The jury recommended mercy in Bentley’s case. However executing Bentley
satisfied a general sense of revenge for the death of the policeman, and was
supported by the Home Secretary.

18/1/1934.British police made their first arrest using
pocket radios. They caught a thief in Brighton three minutes after he had
stolen three overcoats from a shop.

4/5/1932, The mob
leader Al
Capone began his prison sentence for tax evasion.

13/8/1915, George Joseph
Smith, the infamous ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, was hanged by John Ellis
at Maidstone Prison. Smith had ‘married’ three different women,
then murdered them to claim on life insurance policies or gain their fortunes.

23/11/1910, The American Dr Hawley Crippen was hanged in London’s
Pentonville Prison for the murder of his wife,

22/10/1910. American born Dr Hawley
Harvey Crippen was convicted at the Old Bailey of poisoning his wife
Belle Elmore.
The trial began on 18/10/1910. Born in Michigan, USA, Crippen achieved notoriety as a
poisoner. He graduated from Michigan University, and married. He then moved to
England where he worked as a dentist and medicine salesman. After a party at
his home in Holloway, London, on 31/1/1910, he poisoned his wife. The police
began inquiries after he brought a young typist, Ethel Le Neve, to live in the house.
The couple fled, and the remains of Crippen’s wife Belle were found in the cellar
on 14/7/1910. Crippen
was caught after the captain of the ocean liner Montrose radioed a message about two suspicious passengers to
Scotland Yard. He was arrested on SS Montrose on 31/7/1910, with Ethel
dressed as a boy. He was charged on 29/8/1910. This was the first time radio had been used to track down a criminal.
Crippen
was hanged on 23/11/1910 at Pentonville Prison, still protesting his innocence.

29/8/1910, Dr Crippen was
charged with murder.

31/7/1910, The murderer Dr Crippen
was arrested aboard the SS Montrose just before docking in Quebec.He was the first criminal to be captured by
the use of wireless.

31/1/1910, Dr Hawley
Harvey Crippen poisoned his wife Belle Elmore, music hall singer,
then cut her in small pieces and buried her in the cellar. See 22/10/1910.
Telling suspicious friends of Elmore that she had gone to America, Dr Crippen
brought secretary Ethel Le Neuve, 27, into his house as his lover.See 22/10/1910.

1907, Until 1907 there was no appeal possible against criminal
conviction in the English legal system. In this year the Court of Criminal Appeal was instituted by Act of Parliament.

1903, In the UK, the Poor
Prisoners Defence Act established the first legal aid scheme.

1903, The Pistols Act
in Britain
banned sales of handguns to people under 18 or those ‘drunken or insane’.

13/9/1902. Britain’s first
conviction onfingerprintevidence
was obtained by the Metropolitan Police in a case at the Old Bailey against Harry Jackson.

1873, The English Court system was reformed. Until now it had consisted
of; 1) The Court of King’s (Queen’s)
Bench. This dealt with criminal cases, and was originally presided over by
the King (Queen) himself, sitting on a raised Bench. 2) The Court of Exchequer, which dealt
primarily with cases involving royal or public revenues. 3) The Court of Common Pleas, dealing with
property disputes between private citizens. 4) The High Court of Chancery, which decided cases ‘in equity’ that
is, cases where the law needed modification or interpretation to avoid
injustice. In 1873 these Courts were brought together as the High Court of Justice. Along with the Court of Appeal this formed the Supreme Court of Judicature.The High Court now comprised three Divisions;
Chancery, Kings Bench and Probate,
Divorce and Admiralty. Equity cases come under Chancery. See also 1907.

2/11/1871, In Britain, systematic photographing of
convicted prisoners began.This was
the start of the ‘rogue’s gallery’.

1856, In Britain the County and Borough Police Act
complelled all boroughs and counties to set up police forces.

1833, In Britain, the Lighting and Watching Act allowed any
town with population exceeding 5,000 to appoint paid watchmen.

5/2/1788, Sir Robert Peel, British Tory Prime Minister
and founder of the Metropolitan Police
Force, was born at Bury in Lancashire, the son of a cotton millionaire.

26/1/1788, The first
batch of British convicts arrived at Sydney Cove, Australia. They came
aboard the HMS Endeavour, captained by Arthur Phillip; 570 men and 160 women were the
survivors of a 36-week voyage from England on which the pox had killed 48 of
the prisoners. Captain
Phillip was to administer the penal colony. See 18/1/1788.

18/1/1788 A penal settlement was established at Botany Bay,
Australia. The first convicts
arrived on 26/1/1788. The option of sending its prisoners to America was no
longer open to Britain.

13/5/1787, A fleet of 11 ships
consisting of 2 two men 3 stores ships, and 6 convict transporters with some 730 convicts set sail from England
for Australia under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. The journey lasted
until January 1788. The convicts
disembarked at Sydney Cove, minus 40 who had died on the voyage.

1748, The Bow
Street Runners were established by Henry Fielding, a magistrate at Bow Street. They
were both police and detective force, a precursor to the first London police
force established on 29/9/1829.

1532, The Holy Roman Empire
passed a law authorising the death penalty for practising black magic.

621 BCE, Draco, an Athenian lawgiver,
drew up a code of laws that set out severe pinishments for theft, sacrilege and
even laziness, which could be punished with death. Hence the term ‘draconian’ for any severe or harsh law
today.

1750 BCE, The Laws of Hammurabi, King of
Babylon, were set out. If a commoner destroyed the eye of a Babylonian noble, his
own eye was to be put out; if a noble put out a commoner’s eye, he was only
fined. Theft from a burning building and adultery were punished gy death, and a
son who struck his father, or a surgeon who botched an operation, had their
hands cut off. The Code also set out wage rates for labourers and craftsmen,
and for hiring oxen.

Appendix 2 – Capital
Punishment and its Abolition

The status of the death
penalty is complex worldwide. Essentially there are four
possible situations, 1) Total abolition of
the death penalty, 2) Abolition for
ordinary peacetime offences, but possible retention in wartime (there may also
be an experimental period of de-facto
abolition before legal abolition is instituted), 3) The
death penalty exists but is not used in practice, 4) The
death penalty exists and is being used. Within (4), the range of offences liable to the death
penalty can vary from murder only to include, possibly, political crimes, and
‘economic’ crimes such as theft and forgery, also serious drugs offences, or, (e.g.
in Iran) distributing certain forms of pornography. Within (3), executions may take
place rarely, then the death penalty passes into disuse again for some years.

‘Executions ceased’ implies this was the last year an
execution took place.

Islamic Law may support the death penalty. African countries also tend to support
it as the only appropriate piunishent for murder.

2017, 49% of US citizens supported the death
penalty, down from 80% in 1995.

23/7/2014, Joseph Wood, convicted of double
murder, took nearly 2 hours to die by
lethal injection in an Arizona prison. Questions were raised on the
practicality of the death sentence in America.

1/1996, Executions resumed in Thailand; the last previous
execution had been in 1987.

1995, New York
State, USA, restored the death penalty, under
Governor E. Pataki, after a break of 32 years. Spain
abolished the death penalty from its Military Penal Code. The South African
Constitutional Court abolished the death penalty.

1995, The South African
Constitutional Court, in the case of The
State v. T Makwanye and M Mcbunu, that the death openalty was ‘incompatible
with the prohibition against cruel and degrading punbishment ‘. Hpwever the
South African Parliament, faced with rising levels of ciolent crime, wasd
reluctant to abolish the death penalty. See 7/1992.

12/1995, Moldova abolished the death penalty.

11/1995, The President of Mauritius was obliged to ratify a second
vote of the National Assembly abolishing the death penalty. He had
been reluctant to do this because he was dissatisfied with the length of alternative
imprisonment proposed. See 1987.

8/1995, The
Gambia restored the death penalty, following a
military coup. See 1993.

6/1995, A moratorium on executions
in Albania.

1994, Lebanon hanged a man,
11 years after the last use of the death penalty there.

1994, Kansas, USA, restored the death penalty, after a break of 29 years.

1993, The Philippines restored the death penalty. The
Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Hong Kong abolished capital punishment.
See 1995. Greece
abolished the death penalty for ordinary offences during peacetime.

1992, Angola abolished the death penalty. Sierra Leone executed those convicted of a coup plot, after
a lull in executions of over a decade. Turkey abolished the
death enalty for drugs offences, and Taiwan made the death
penalty for mudred discretionary rather than mandatory.

7/1992, The South African
Minister of Justice announced a suspension of the death penalty, see 1971,
1995.

2/1992, Algeria
declared a State of Emergency, and executions resumed in 8/1993. There was a
temporary moratorium on the death penalty from 12/1993, but executions resumed
from 3/1994.

1991, Papua New Guinea restored the death penalty, for ‘wilful murder’.

1990, Mozambique and Namibia
abolished the death penalty. Sao Tome &
Principe, which had retained the death
penalty for military offences only, completely abolished it. Zambia made the death penalty for murder discretionary
rather than mandatory. Nepal abolished the death penalty again (see 1945, 1985) for
all but ‘exceptional crimes’ – a protyection against assassination attempts on
the Royal Family.

1990, Bulgaria commuted all
death sentences to 30 years imprisonment. However a death sentence was passed
in 1992, but this too was commuted to imprisonment.

7/1990, The Czech and Slovak Republics abolished the death penalty.

1989, Cambodia andNew Zealand abolished the death penalty. Singapore extended the
death penalty to all offences involving the use of firearms.

1989, Executions ceased in Serbia.

7/1/1990, Romaniaabolished
the death penalty.

1988, Executions ceased in Poland.and Zimbabwe.

1987, Executions ceased in Mauritius. See 11/1995. The new government of the Philippines, following the overthrow of the Marcos regime,
abolished the death penalty as an infringement of human rights. Haiti abolished the
death penalty.

1987, East
Germany abolished the death penalty.

1985, Nepal restored the death penalty for some murders and terrorist
offences,see 1945, 1990. Executions resumed
in Guyana after a
15-year break. They ceased again in 1991. St
Christopher-Nevis executed one man; no executions since then. South Carolina, USA, resumed executions after a break of 21 years.

Executions ceased in Chile
and Belize.

1984, Executions ceased in Surinam. Argentina abolished the death penalty – it had been
reintroduced by a military government in 1971, abolished for non-military
crimes in 1972, and reintroduced after a military coup in 1976. 1990s political
initiatives to reintroduce the death penalty have been thwarted by the Roman
Catholic Church. North Carolina, USA, executed a woman after a break of 21 years.

5/9/1984, Western
Australia became the last Australian State to abolish capital punishment.

1983, Executions ceased in Guatemala.
Cyprus abolished
the death penalty. Malaysia instituted the death penalty for possession of drugs.

1982, Executions ceased in Tonga.

1981,Cape Verde abolished the death penalty.

18/11/1981, France formally abandoned the use of the
guillotine.

18/9/1981, Under President Mitterrand, France abolished the guillotine and capital punishment.

1980, Turkey ended a 7-year
period, from 1973, with no executions. Between 1980 and 1983 there were 48
executions in Turkey; 23 for ordinary crimes and 25 for political crimes.

1979, The
Seychelles and Fiji abolished the death penalty for ordinary
crimes during peacetime. Peru abolished the death penalty. Executions ceased in Trinidad and Tobago. Thailand instituted the
death penalty for possession of drugs.

15/4/1978, The death penalty
was abolishedin Spain.

1977, Libya resumed executions after a lapse of 20 years. Bahrain executed a convict after a lapse of 20 years in
executions; however it has again ceased executions since then. Bermuda executed two men for a political murder, the first
executions there for 34 years. Executions have aganin ceased since then. Grenada resumed executions after a lapse of 15 years;
executions ceased again in 1978.

10/9/1977.The
last official execution by guillotine
in France; execution of Hamida Djandoubi. See 17/6/1939.

1976, Executions ceased in Sri Lanka (see 1959). However serious civil unrest lead to
the adoption in Parliament of a Private Member’s Bill in 1995 restoring the
death penalty for ‘extreme murders which shock the public conscience’. The death
penalty was formally abolished in Canada for peacetime offences, after an experimental moratorium
of five years. A move to reintroduce in in June 1978 was heavily
defeated in parliament.

4/1976, Executions ceased in Jamaica,
for four years.

1975, Executions ceased in Bosnia. Singapore instituted the death penslty for possession of drugs.

1974, Papua
New Guinea abolished the death penalty for
ordinary crimes during peacetime.

1971, The Society fot the
Abolition of Capital Punishment was founded in South Africa. See 7/1992.

1969, Brazil restored the death penalty (see 1882). However in
1979 the death penalty was declared to be applicable only in times of war. Iran instituted the death
penalty for possession of drugs.

18/12/1969.The death penalty
for murder was formally abolished in Britain.

1968, In Nauru,
no executions since independence in 1968.

1966, The Dominican Republic abolished the death penalty.

9/11/1965. The Act legally abolishing capital punishment in the UK
came into force. This Act was largely due to the efforts of Sidney
Silverman MP.

1964, Executions ceased in Bhutan.

21/12/1964. The UK Commons voted to end
capital punishment.

13/8/1964.The last hangings in Britain
took place – the murderers Peter Anthony
Allen at Walton Prison, Liverpool, and John
Robson Walby at Strangeways Prison, Manchester.

1962, Monaco abolished the death penalty. In Western Samoa, no executions since independence in 1962. Israel last used the death penalty, when it executed Adolf
Eichmann.

12/10/1961.New
Zealand voted toabolish the
death penalty for ordinary crimes during peacetime.

1959, In Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon), a Commission
on Capital Punishment recommended its abolition for an experminental period,
see 1976.

1957, Executions ceased in Brunei.

1956, Honduras abolished the death penalty.

16/2/1956. The British Parliament voted toend the death
penalty.

13/7/1955. Nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis
became the last woman hanged, at
Holloway Prison in Britain, for the murder of her lover David Blakely, following her
conviction on 21/6/1955. However there was public
sympathy for her; she claimed someone else put the gun in her hand; and her case was
influential in bringing about the abolition of the death penalty in the UK.

12/7/1955, The last hanging at Lincoln Prison.
Kenneth
Roberts, 24, was executed for the murder of 18-year-old Mary Georgina
Roberts in Scunthorpe.

10/2/1955, The House of Commons voted by a majority of 31 to
retain the death penalty.

1954, Israel abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime.

23/9/1953, The Royal Commission on
capital punishment said it should be left to the jury as to whether to impose
the death
penalty.

1/7/1953. MPs rejected
a Bill to suspend
the death penalty for 5 years.

1952, Executions ceased in the Maldives.

1950, Austria abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime.

1949, West
Germany abolished the death penalty.

1949, Finland abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime.

20/1/1949,Attlee set up a Royal Commission on
capital punishment.

12/1/1949. In Britain, Margaret Allen
was hanged, the first woman hanged for 12 years.

1947, Italy abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime.

1947, The Soviet Union
abolished the death penalty for ordinary peacetime offences but restored it in
1950.

1945, Nepalabolished
the death penalty for ordinary crimes during peacetime. See 1985.

1942, Switzerland abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime. See 1874.

15/8/1941, Josef Jakobs
became the last person to be executed at
the Tower of London. A German spy, he had parachuted into Huntingdonshire
with a radio transmitter; however he injured his leg in the fall and was
captured by the Home Guard. He was tried and shot the same day, in a chair.

17/6/1939.The last public execution in France. The
German multiple-murderer, Eugen Wiedman, was publicly guillotined outside Versailles gaol, near Paris. See
25/4/1739 and 10/9/1977.

26/5/1868, The last public execution in Britain took place outside Newgate Prison.
Michael
Barrett, the hanged man, had murdered 12 people with a bomb.

21/4/1868, In the UK, a Bill to abolish capital punishment,
introduced by Mr
Gilpin MP, was defeated by 127 votes to 23.

1867, Portugal abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes during
peacetime.

1865, San
Marino abolished the death penalty.

1864, Romania abolished capital punishment.

1863, Venezuela abolished the death penalty.

16/12/1830, The last
‘hanging at execution dock’ in Britain. This punishment involved hanging of
pirates, such as William Kidd in 1701; the convict was then left at low
water mark and immersed three times by the tide before being buried.

5/6/1790, Burning at the stake was officially
abolished as a form of capital punishment in Britain; see 18/3/1789.

21/1/1790, In Paris,
Dr Joseph
Ignace Guillotin demonstrated to the National Assembly of Paris a
new machine for ‘humane’ executions using a heavy blade falling on the victim’s
neck.

18/3/1789, Catherine
(Christian) Murphy (Bowman) became the last person in Britain to be
executed by burning at the stake
(see 5/5/1790). She had been convicted of ‘coining’ (forgery), which was
punished severely as a form of treason.

1787, Austria abolished capital punishment.

9/12/1783, The first executions at London’s Newgate
Prison.

7/11/1783. The last hanging was held at Tyburn, west
London. John
Austin, convicted of forgery, was executed.An estimated 50,000 had been executed at
Tyburn.

24/8/1782, David Tyrie,
having been found guilty of spying for the French, became the last person in Britain to be executed by
hanging, drawing and quartering, at Portsmouth.

1765, According to WilliamBlackstone, renowned legal writer, there were
160 offences carrying the death penalty under English Law.

5/5/1760. The first hanging by hangman’s drop at Tyburn, London. Earl Ferrers
was executed for murdering his valet.

28/7/1716, The last hangings for witchcraft in
England; Mary
Hicks and her 9-year-old daughter Elizabeth were executed at
Huntingdon. The last hanging for witchcraft in Scotland was of Janet Horne,
in Dornoch in 1727.

14/5/1650,The UK
Parliament voted in favour of the death penalty for adultery but this was never
implemented.

Appendix 3
– abolition of other punishments

1881, Flogging in
the British Army was abolished (although caning in military prisons was still
permitted).

1879, The British Royal navy
abolished the ‘Cat’o’Nine Tails’ (a whip made of nine knotted ropes) as
punishment. This form of penalty was first mentioned in around 1700.

11/6/1872, The stocks were last used as
an official form of punishment in Britain.Their last recorded use was at Adpar, west Wales. They had also been
used in 1865 at Rugby, 1863 at Tavistock and 1858 at Colchester. Their introduction in England appears to have
been around the late 14th century. The Second Statute of Labourers
Act, 1350, made provision for their use on ‘unruly artificers’, and in 1376 the
House of Commons asked King Edward II for the establishment of stocks in every
village.

1871, Flogging in
the British Navy in peacetime was suspended.

13/7/1860, The last naval execution at the yardarm
took place, aboard the HMS Leven in the River YantseThe victim was Private John Dallinger.

1853, Transportation of
criminals from Britain to Tasmania ceased. 67,000 convicts had been
trabsported to Van Diemen’s Land, which was now renamed Tasmania.

1840, Transportation of criminals from Britain to New
South Wales ceased. Transportation
to Tasmania
continued until 1853, and to Western Australia until 1868.

30/6/1837. A British Act of Parliament abolished punishment by pillory.

25/7/1834, The British Parliament passed an Act
formally abolishing ‘hanging in chains’. This was a practice once
reserved for the most heinous murderers; after execution, their bodies were
hung in chains in a gibbet near the scene of their crime. The purpose was
two-fold; to deter similar crimes, and to comfort the relatives of the victim.
The last recorded use of ‘hanging in chains’ was in Scotland in 1755, of a Mr Andrew Wilson, who had poisoned his wife.

1809, The last recorded use of
the Ducking Stool in England, at Leominster.

1726, The last recorded case of burning alive in England as a means of execution. A woman
wasput to death this way for
pety-treason (the act of murdering someone to whom one owes allegiance, in this
case, her husband). Burning of women for similar cases of petty treason
continued until ca. 1790 (one such woman was ‘executed’ this was at Ipswich in
1783; however the victim was strangled first.

1727, The last burning of a
witch in Scotland took place, at Dornoch.

1685, The last execution by
drowning in Scotland (the Wigtown martyrs). In England drowning as a
means of execution had ceased by the 1620s; however in France the last such
execution was in 1793 at Nantes.

5/1640, The last use of torture as part of the English judicial system.

28/3/1542, In England, Margaret Davy was boiled to death.
This rare punishment was inflicted for her committing murder by poisoning.

1215, The Catholic Church in Europe decreed
that trial by ordeal at the Fourth Lateran Council (for example by ducking the suspect
underwater and seeing if God preserved their life, if so they were innocent)
was too superstitious. This decree led to the emergence of modern trial by
jury.

Appendix 6 – Prisons

1991,
Belmarsh Prison in S E London opened.

1972,
Canada finally ceased sterilising
convicts in prison.

1/8/1963,The
minimum age for prison in the UK was raised to 17.

21/3/1963.Alcatraz, the notorious prison in San Francisco
Bay, was closed. It had been a
maximum-security prison since 1934.

22/8/1953, The
infamous French prison of Devils Island, depicted in the film Papillon, was closed after a century of
operations.

1937, Nazi
Germany had, by now, forcibly sterilised
some 225,000 convicts in prison. An opinion pool in the US this year showed
two-thirds of respondents supported this idea, and in the UK Churchill also
privately supported the idea.

27/5/1936.The first open prison in Britain was
opened at New Hall, near Wakefield, Yorkshire.

11/8/1934, The first
batch of prisoners, classified ‘most dangerous’, arrived at the new Alcatraz
high-security prison in San Francisco Bay.

1908,
In the UK, the Children Act abolished the practice of sending children aged under
14 to prison.

16/10/1902. The first Borstal institutionopened, at the village of Borstal near Rochester, Kent.

1/4/1902,The treadmillwas
abolished in British prisons. It was invented by Sir W Cubitt
around 1818. The UK’s Prison Act 1865
specified that every male prisoner aged over 16 sentenced to hard labour should
spemd at least 3 months of his sentence on ‘first class labour’ – that is, the
treadmill, crank, capstan or stone-breaking. The Prisons Act 1877 reduced this period to one month. A day of such
labour consisted of two 3-hour sessions, with a 3 minute break between 15
minutes of work.

1899,
The US State of Indiana began forcibly
sterilising convicts in prison. By 1941, 36,000 criminals had been
sterilised.

1891,
Wormwood Scrubs
prison, London, opened.

11/1890, Millbank
Prison, London, closed.

3/11/1870.In Britain,
the photographing of every prisoner was made compulsory. A photograph
had been successfully used on a ‘wanted’ poster in 1861.

1863, Broadmoor, asylum for
the criminally insane, was built.

1852,
Holloway
Prison, London,for women, opened.

1849,
Construction
work on Wandsworth Prison began. Male prisoners were first admitted in 1851;
female prisoners from 1852.

1845,
Crumlin Road
prison, Belfast, opened.

1842, Pentonville
Prison, north London, opened (closed 1996).

1821, Millbank Prison,
London, opened.

1820,
Brixton
Prison opened, as the Surrey House of Correction.

1806,
Construction
of Dartmoor Prison began.

1790,
The
New Bailey Prison, in Salford, Manchester, opened, It closed in 1868.

20/1/1790, John Howard, prison reformer,
died.

21/5/1780. Elizabeth Fry,
prison reformer, was born in
Norwich. She was the daughter of a Quaker banker, John Gurney.

1218, Newgate Prison, London,
opened.

1166, In
Britain, the Assize of Clarendon ordered jails to be constructed in all English
counties and boroughs.